Right Thinking from the Left Coast

Tag: E-mail Scandal

On Friday afternoon, the FBI released its 47-page report on the investigation into the private email server Hillary Clinton used while serving as secretary of state. (The FBI also released an 11-page document detailing its interview with Clinton in early July.)

Among the things revealed?

Clinton had 13 different mobile devices during her tenure as SoS. Most are not accounted for. Some were smashed.

Clinton never sought approval for using a private server and ignored warning from her own office about using unsecured devices.

Astoundingly, Clinton’s people began wiping her servers three weeks after the story broke in the NYT. This was a deliberate and calculated attempt to hide her e-mails.

Clinton also blamed her concussion for her inability to remember some things. This is after weeks of HOW DARE YOU! responses to questions about her health.

You can read the whole thing. Best take on it I’ve seen is from Ken White, who said the kindest interpretation is incompetence and arrogance. The least kind: obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents, which are criminal acts.

The thing that strikes me over and over again is that this was completely unnecessary. If Clinton had simply told the truth right off the bat, this scandal would have died a quiet death. There’s unlikely to be anything truly damning in those e-mails. But the Clintons lie — fluently, repeatedly and instinctively. And, somehow she got away with it. I can appreciate the dilemma that Comey found himself in: an indictment of Clinton would have been the political storm of the century, directly affecting the election. But … at some point … doesn’t the rule of law have to apply to Presidential candidates?

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton told federal investigators that Colin Powell, a former secretary of State, advised her to use a personal email account, the New York Times reports.

The newspaper said the information, from a three-and-a-half-hour interview with Clinton in July, is included in notes the Federal Bureau of Investigation gave to Congress on Tuesday.

The NYT also cites a book by political journalist Joe Conason that says during a conversation at a dinner party hosted by another former secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, in Washington in 2009, Powell advised Clinton to use her “own email” except for classified communications.

The newspaper says it received an advance copy of the book, called Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton.

“Toward the end of the evening, over dessert, Albright asked all of the former secretaries to offer one salient bit of counsel to the nation’s next top diplomat,” Conason writes in the book, according to the NYT.

“Powell told her to use her own email, as he had done, except for classified communications, which he had sent and received via a State Department computer.”

“Saying that his use of personal email had been transformative for the department,” Mr. Powell “thus confirmed a decision she had made months earlier — to keep her personal account and use it for most messages,” the extract continued.

That emphasis is mine. Because this scumbag Clinton is again trying to confuse the issue by pretending what she did was the norm, which is that she had used her personal account- as advised – to conceal the nefarious and criminal activity of that Clinton foundation funds – but ignored the most important part of that advice she got: EXCEPT FOR CLASSIFIED COMMUNICATIONS!

The FBI has recommended that the DOJ not seek charges for Clinton’s e-mail scandal. Here is Comey’s statement. I expected this, as did most people. Law are for plebs, not monarchs. Although I expected maybe a few low-level grunts to be the fall guys.

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

Now maybe this would be acceptable if it came from someone who was not James Comey, who has pressed felony charges in far less clear circumstances. Comey admits that Clinton deliberately set up her own e-mail servers to shield her e-mails from FOIA. He admits she mishandled classified evidence, enormous amounts of it, including at least seven piece of Top Secret information and that there is no way she couldn’t have known this information was classified. He admits she tried to conceal what she did. But he focuses heavily on intent, which is something the FBI never focuses on with the rest of us.

Inadvertently breaking the law can get you indicted. Covering up what you did, even if you didn’t break the law, can get you indicted. But Clinton, who deliberately broke the rules and tried to cover it up, won’t even get a wrist slap. And people wonder why Trump is so popular.

Hillary Clinton permanently deleted all the emails on the private server she used to do official business as secretary of state, the Republican lawmaker who subpoenaed the emails said late Friday.

Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, chairman of the House committee investigating the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, said Clinton’s lawyer informed him of the news.

“Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” Gowdy said in a statement.

Gowdy had also asked that Clinton turn over her server to the State Department inspector general for an independent review.

Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, said no.

Clinton has turned over some hard copies of e-mails. But she apparently had the server wiped when the State Department asked her to turn her e-mails over to them.

I know this is a complete non-scandal that I’m only bringing up because I’m a misogynist dinosaur who can’t stand the idea of a woman being President. But, as Conor reminds us, the Clintons and their acolytes have a long history of this, from Sandy Berger smuggling classified information out of the 9/11 investigation to her law firm billing records. This is what the Clintons do: they lie, they cover-up, they conceal, they obfuscate and then they blame everyone else. It’s a game to them. They lie about things that they have no need whatsoever to lie about. It’s almost as if they get off on lying.

And they do it also because they get away with it. No matter how many untruths they hurl about, there are never any consequences. No charges will come from this incident. It is unlikely to hurt Clinton at the polls. The MSM is doing their damndest to ignore it, having to be goaded into even asking softball questions about it.

This is why I have said that I am dreading blogging the 2016 election. The Democrats seem to have unanimously decided that Clinton is the nominee. And the press doesn’t seem interested in peeking behind the curtain. So 2016 is likely to unfold exactly this way: Clinton is found to have done something wrong, the press ignores it and it doesn’t hurt her inevitable ascent.

Look, I have a grudging respect for Clinton as Secretary of State. The disaster that has unfolded since Kerry took over tells me that Clinton must have been better than I thought to keep this gang of idiots from starting from World War III. At least she kept us from fighting with and against Iran at the same time.

But I’m tired of the Clintons. I’m utterly sick of the sight of them. They have been in politics since 1977. They have been in national politics since 1992. We’ve had them in our faces for almost a quarter of a century. Enough. I’d vote for Elizabeth Warren before I’d vote for another chapter or two of the Clinton Chronicles. We don’t need a campaign full of this kind of garbage. And we certainly don’t need four or, God help us, eight years of scandal.